Jihadi Du Jour

For a Western mind to understand a Jihadi is hard, if not nearly impossible. The logic seems different, the thoughtwave patterns seem to transmit on a different wavelength. Therefore, one must carefully examine what makes a Jihadi tick. While, Eastern philosophies and way of life differ from their Western counterparts there are similarities, there is a lot more in common than first meets the eye. Life’s value may vary but basically every normal, healthy, human being wants a good moral life and enough sustenance to provide comfortably for one’s family. And yet, the Jihadi is different! Life has no value, happiness on this plane of existence is seemingly of little consequence. Especially so, because of the very materialistic Paradise promised by Mohammed as Yid With Lid documents.

To help us understand what makes a Jihadi, I will quote from an article by a Pakistani writer (himself, a Muslim), Ziauddin Sardar, which appeared in Britain’s New Statesman:

What goes on in the mind of a jihadi?

A few weeks ago, I had a close encounter with a jihadi suicide bomber. That got me thinking. We know that jihadis are motivated by a perverted notion of religion. But not all jihadis are suicide bombers. What was the extra ingredient, I wondered, that turned a jihadi into one? What’s going on in his mind?

I say “him” because most of the jihadis in Pakistan so far have been young men. But this may change. Last month, burqa-clad female students took over the Hafsa mosque in Islamabad. To begin with, they wanted to defend the mosque, which the authorities want to demolish. Then they started kidnapping “prostitutes” - which was basically anyone not wearing a burqa. Now they are demanding sharia law and want to turn Pakistan into an “Islamic state”. If their demands are not met, they say, they will unleash a wave of suicide bombings.

Yes, gentle reader, a female mind can be as easily indoctrinated as a male’s mind, even if the “perks” are not quite the same…

I take these women seriously. While filming a Dispatches investigation for Channel 4 on Pakistan, I went to the Hafsa mosque. The female students stood, shoulder to shoulder, wielding sticks. Some kept a vigil on the roof where a machine-gun was on display. Security forces prevented me from getting inside the mosque, but I managed to talk to their shrouded comrades a few days later. Although their rhetoric was blood-curdling, what really worried me was how contented they were. They were angry and ready to kill and be killed. But, above all, they oozed buckets of self-satisfaction.

I found the same contentment in the jihadi I interviewed in Karachi. He was captured in a police raid wearing a jacket containing 6.5 kilos of explosive, and carrying three grenades. Still in his early twenties, if he had succeeded in his mission he would have killed many people. Armed police brought him for interview, his face covered, and in shackles that reminded me of the Middle Ages. I was nervous. But he was cool as a mountain stream. He was neither disturbed nor concerned; he showed no feelings or emotions. He was exceptionally happy to be a jihadi, he said. I learned from the police that most jihadis in their custody were like this.

What is it that so hypnotizes a Jihadi, as to be happy with the potential of pain or even death? What powerful mind altering drug are being applied? To give you an idea of what early Jihadists were like, the word “assassin” is derived from the Arabic word “hashasshin.” It originally described a militant sect of Ismaili Muslims that was active between the 8th and 14th centuries. The members who were charged with killing the sect’s enemies supposedly smoked opium or hassish prior to carrying out their deed. However, according to the Wikipedia, “Today, it is known that hashishinnya was an offensive term used to depict this cult by its Muslim and Mongolian detractors; the extreme zeal and cold preparation to murder makes it unlikely they ever used drugs. As far as is known they only used daggers, rarely survived their attacks, even when successful.” So too, today, no real drugs are known to be used. Instead the teachers, use brain washing techniques on their subjects from a very early age, onwards.

What makes them so contented? The idea that they have a place in paradise is partly responsible. But there is more at play than just religion.

Terrorist groups, like most employers, demand certain qualities from their recruits. And the jihadi recruits have to meet certain psycho logical standards. It helps if they have been educated in a madrasa, where they are taught that Islam is not a faith or a world-view but an absolute, an unchanging list of dos and don’ts that have to be adhered to at all costs.

But more important is for the jihadis to have a psychological make-up that can easily be manipulated by their handlers. Jihadis do not receive much training. What they do go through is a process of speedy but effective brainwashing. They have to be impressionable, empty vessels into which any old junk can be poured and defined as Absolute Truth. That is why so many of them tend to be so young.

The brainwashing is achieved through two processes. First, their mental framework is rearranged and fitted with exclusive transmitters and no receivers. They can speak but cannot listen. Rather, they can spout only certain tailor-made phrases and pieties. So a conversation with them can only be a one-way affair. They become quite incapable of rotational thought, and it becomes impossible to argue or reason with them. Second, they are transported into a beatific space where all human concerns become irrelevant. Hence, the contentment that they experience. The jihadi I interviewed was having some kind of mystical experience, I felt. He was altogether on another plane, a different universe, where what happened to him or what he did to others was totally meaningless. The window of paradise had been opened for him, and he could feel its fragrant draught. That experience was the only thing that really mattered to him.

So, what goes on in the minds of jihadis? Nothing. Because there is nothing inside them. All their humanity has been flushed out. Emotions and feelings have evaporated; critical faculties and moral compasses have been removed; they have been divorced from human concerns and experience. That’s what I saw when I met the female jihadis of Hafsa mosque. I felt their contentment. And it made me quiver with fear.

Yes, gentle reader, it is very scary! As someone living in the West, what scares me the most is not just the Islamic Jihadi.There is also another, (albeit unwitting) Jihadi. He/she is the one who will stupidly and unthinkingly repeat, like sheep, the mantras taught by left wing ideologists. Noam Chomsky, for example, who never met a jihadist he didn’t like, poses for photo ops with every sworn enemy of the US or Israel. He is an author praised by opportunistic drug dealer/politicos, like Hugo Chávez. Chomsky’s grandiloquent ideas, however, when tested in the light of true freedom, when tested in the light of the lessons of history, fall apart! They are like a house without foundation, it may look beautiful, but is not firmly grounded just as his ideas have no grounding in reason.

Yet Chomsky, like the teachers of the Pakistani Jihadists, has seduced the mind and shutdown the thinking and reasoning abilities of multitudes of impressionable youth. With revisionist history that ignores key facts and often substitutes them with fantasies, he and a whole slew of academics (the discredited Ward Churchill, immediately comes to mind!) have succeeded in producing an America where celebrities’ inane pronouncements are taken as supreme truths, as deep philosophical statements.

Chomsky, while he may hate the US and everything the West stands for, is no fool! I doubt he himself believes even a tenth of what he proclaims. So, what is his motivation? Anyone who has known the good professor, anyone acquainted with him since childhood will tell you that Noam is first and foremost a superb self-promoter no matter whose head he must tread on, no matter what controversial or outrages pronouncement he must fabricate… but there is more… By practically becoming the head theologian of extreme liberal politics, he positioned himself for a very important position. If George Soros and Michael Moore succeed in their vision, Chomsky would become a prominent member of that government. Were it not for the fact that, if they actually do succeed (and I quiver with fear at the mere thought!), it will soon become a World Caliphate. Will Chomsky, the Jew, then become Al-Noami, the Islamist? Could he be that hypocritical, would he sell his soul to save his neck? You betcha!

Before you, gentle reader, tell me that I’m being outrageous myself, that my comparison of Liberalism with Jihadism is unfair and has no basis in truth, let me repeat you the following from the article above: “First, their mental framework is rearranged and fitted with exclusive transmitters and no receivers. They can speak but cannot listen. Rather, they can spout only certain tailor-made phrases and pieties. So a conversation with them can only be a one-way affair. They become quite incapable of rotational thought, and it becomes impossible to argue or reason with them.” Sound familiar, anyone?

Chaim

Cross posted at Freedom's Cost